Bulletin

Democrats issue Medicare warning

Letter to Bush carries implied filibuster threat

By

WilliamL. Watts

WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- Senate Democrats warned President Bush and Republican lawmakers Thursday that they would fight any senior prescription drug proposal that puts Medicare at a disadvantage to private health plans or includes a number of other controversial proposals included in a House bill.

House and Senate negotiators were said Wednesday to be making progress toward a final agreement on a compromise $400 billion Medicare prescription drug plan. The negotiators have been working since summer to iron out significant differences between House and Senate versions of the bill.

"I think those reports are overly optimistic and, I would say, mischaracterized. There is no agreement," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Thursday.

Passage of a final Medicare prescription drug plan will likely require the support of at least some Democrats in the narrowly divided Senate.

In a letter to Bush, Daschle, 38 other Senate Democrats, Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine and the chamber's one independent warned that a "partisan conference report that jeopardizes Medicare and does not provide meaningful assistance to the elderly and disabled should not and will not pass."

Daschle said Democrats weren't threatening a filibuster at this time. But with 41 signatures, the threat appeared clear. It takes 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber to end a filibuster.

The letter urged Bush to jump into the negotiations in order to "provide the leadership necessary to achieve a bipartisan bill that can become law."

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., whose support was seen as crucial in enabling the Senate to pass its own version of a prescription drug bill earlier this year, said a filibuster wouldn't be necessary to block the conference proposals.

"It doesn't have to be a question of a filibuster. I just don't believe that the kinds of measures that are being advanced now in that conference would pass the Senate," Kennedy told reporters.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., have urged Medicare negotiating teams, which include only two Democrats -- moderate Sens. Max Baucus and John Breaux -- to reach a broad outline for a final compromise by Friday.

Neither Baucus nor Breaux signed the letter to Bush.

Reports said negotiations have favored a final bill that looks more like the package that passed the House this summer on a close, party-line vote rather than the Senate bill that cleared the upper chamber with Republican and Democratic support.

Head-to-head competition?

Among key issues, House Republican leaders are reportedly urging that a final bill retain in some form a House provision that requires Medicare to compete directly with private health plans beginning in 2010.

Senate Democrats have said such a measure would kill prospects for bipartisan support.

"That is virtually a show-stopper," Daschle said.

Conservative Republicans insist that the measure is crucial to Medicare reform and would hold down rising health-care costs by injecting more competition into the Medicare system. Most Democrats have opposed such proposals, arguing they would leave the sickest seniors vulnerable to higher premiums as healthier seniors migrated to private plans.

The letter also addressed other concerns, including a demand that a final bill provide a "universal benefit" that is the same for all seniors regardless of where they live. It also warned against efforts to limit spending through caps on benefits or other measures.

"The conference report must not impose caps or other arbitrary limits on Medicare spending ... Medicare is an entitlement that senior citizens have earned, and this legislation should not change that fundamental commitment," the senators wrote.

The letter also called on negotiators to ensure that the final bill doesn't provide employers an incentive to drop existing drug coverage for seniors.

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